Vodou Culture 101: Curiosity
This iterates on the post about ignorance and mystery.
There is no right to know in vodou, and no right to ask, either. Not only is ignorance protective, but answering questions—sharing wisdom or knowledge that the person has not earned—is dangerous to the person who provides the answers. They can incur penalties, including sharing in the consequences of how that unearned wisdom is used. If, for instance, someone is given a recipe that they are not intended to have and they use it with an effect that harms someone, the consequences will be shared between the person and their teacher.
Generally, if you aren’t supposed to know something, it’s because you are highly likely to misuse that knowledge, or because you cannot use that knowledge. One does not give a baby a .45 with the safety off. They might not be able to pull the trigger, but it’s liable to cause problems all the same. If they do manage to pull the trigger, it is liable to result in fatal consequences. Doing so is incredibly irresponsible.
Physical age has nothing to do with this. We’re talking about the age of the soul and the consciousness.
Because the US majority culture believes knowledge and information should be generally free, and that we’re roughly the same, the curiosity that US majority culture members often express about vodou is often understood by vodouizans as entitlement, in that they believe they should be allowed to have the information. It is also understood as stubbornness, in that even if told no, many US majority culture members will keep insisting that they should have the information. If they can’t, they tend to make stuff up, which is also entitlement, because one is does not have a right to represent a culture one does not participate in. There are a lot of people on social media claiming initiations they clearly do not possess, likely because they couldn’t find a society or initiator.
US majority culture members’ desire to know will often rise to the level of hounding vodouizans for information, which strikes many vodouizans as unappreciative of their time in addition to being stubborn and entitled. While some of us go out of our way to explain things, as I am, not all of us are moved to answer, nor do most of us want to deal with the public. The public often insists they have the right to our time, wisdom, knowledge, resources, and skill. The process of getting that wisdom, knowledge, and skill takes entire lives. We also often do not have much in terms of resources to spare for curious and often affluent questioners. Because there are so few of us compared to the populations we serve, we simply don’t have a lot of time to spare. It is not uncommon for a priest or spiritual worker to get a few hours of sleep a night, if that, in the process of serving our children and communities.
Curiosity is not considered a virtue in vodou. It is considered a dangerous character trait.
